Monthly Archives: February 2014

(This needs to be revisited because this is exactly what is happening vis-a-vis the Ukraine situation. Big essay coming with THIS essay as the required antecedent/premise. Originally penned and posted on March 19, ARSH 2013.)

If I had a band, I’d name it “Spectral Doughnut”. But I don’t, so anyone who wants the name can have it.

Did you know that the official, fancy-pants mathematical term for a doughnut is “torus”? Well, not for a doughnut as a foodstuff, but for the shape of a doughnut: a tube bent around such that the two endpoints connect.

Conceptually, the torus is everywhere in life. Extremes on either side of a human spectrum have the nasty habit of being the same position. The most obvious example of this is in the political sphere, and while I’m not much of a Glenn Beck fan, Beck did explain this a few years ago. The far left is all about totalitarian control by a cadre of oligarchs. There really isn’t any such thing as a true dictatorship, because one man cannot physically force an entire government or people to do his will. He will always have a cadre of enablers and henchmen around him, and if he loses the support of that cadre of henchmen, they will kill him. Thus even the most seemingly solitary dictator is really just a frontman for an oligarchy. Dictatorial oligarchies use brute force to impose their will and have no respect for the Rule of Law. They consider themselves to be the law. If they want it, they take it, and if you don’t like that, they kill you. On the left, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins.

“On the left, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins.”

The far right is the same thing. The far right is anarchy, which means no government. This is also referred to as “unrestrained capitalism”. The idea of “no government” sounds good on the surface, especially when you’re faced with the truly satanic government we have now, until you realize that also means NO RULE OF LAW. Likewise with the idea of “unrestrained capitalism”, also sometimes called “Anarcho-capitalism”. It sounds good on the surface, right? Not that “unrestrained capitalism” actually exists anywhere. The closest any economy ever gets to “unrestrained capitalism” is actually a two-layered paradigm wherein the oligarchs are indeed completely unrestrained and can steal at will with zero recourse by the victims, and everyone not in the oligarch class is literally regulated into the ground. A true, universally unrestrained capitalism is a nonexistent boogey-man used by Marxists to demonize and vilify capitalism, and a shallow and desperately naive fantasy of a handful of economists – most of whom have clearly never had any meaningful experience with markets or business. But even in the realm of thought exercises, this universal anarchy clearly leads to hell also. Every man for himself. In this environment, once again, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins. Oddly, “unrestrained capitalism” only manifests when a far-left oligarchy comes to power – as stated above.

While the philosophical paths may differ, the ends are exactly the same. No matter which arm of the doughnut you favor, if you move away from logic, reason and truth, proceeding out of which is charity in the true sense of the word, meaning love of neighbor, not just throwing “free stuff” at the nebulous conceptual mob of “the people” or “the poor”, or as with anarchy a total indifference toward neighbor, you are going to end up with exactly the same end: an elite, minuscule, ruling class with a massive, brutally oppressed underclass, and lots and lots of dead bodies. In both the far left and far right, to quote Obama’s Manufacturing czar Ron Bloom quoting Mao: All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

That is only partially true. All political power in a godless regime, either far right or far left, comes from the barrel of a gun. In a Godly monarchy, the power comes from God Himself. The same could possibly be said of an early Godly republic, but history proves that republics never last long.

Socialism and unrestrained capitalism are basically the same thing: the two arms of the torus touch. Marxist-socialist-communist systems forcibly steal the property of the underclass and deliver it into the insatiably greedy hands of the minuscule oligarch class. Unrestrained capitalism does EXACTLY the same thing. A minuscule cadre of what are today called banksters, but used to be called robber barons, forcibly confiscate, in simple terms STEAL, the property of the underclass and hoard it for themselves. It is the same thing. This is why these banksters, who one would at first blush think of as capitalists, are always found in bed with Marxist politicians. Marxism and unrestrained capitalism are essentially the same thing: theft and looting of the underclasses by a cadre of super-rich oligarchs, with zero rule of law, only the brutal rule of men from the barrel of a gun.

This has become so clear today because the banksters and Marxist politicians now routinely swap jobs. Jon Corzine went from Goldman Sachs to the United States Senate and the New Jersey statehouse back out into MF Global. Hank Paulsen went from Goldman Sachs to heading the U.S. Treasury Department. Almost all politicians after leaving office either by being voted out or retiring (if they ever do), usually go straight onto corporate boards. For the politicians that never retire, they place their family members in corporate positions.

Bottom line: beware of ANYONE who is constantly pushing one of these political or economic extremes, because both move AWAY FROM GOD, and ultimately meet up in the same place: hell. When far leftists are beating the drum of “the poor” and “the people”, that means there is about to be a massive, and utterly dehumanizing confiscation of wealth, which will end up in the hands of the oligarchs, and the poor will get poorer, thus “necessitating” more dehumanizing confiscations in the name of “the poor”. And that is when the dead bodies REALLY start to pile up. Run away from that evil at full speed. And when capitalism becomes unrestrained and there is no Rule of Law, and all that matters is who you know and what connections you have, and the only way to “succeed” is to be a thieving thug psychopath, then run away at full speed. That’s what I did.

And now, I am going to go have a doughnut because it will be a purely intellectual exercise, and thus will have no calories.

2. First, let me apologize for my infrequent posts. I have taken on a daily commitment and, for the past week, have also been under attack by an insidious bug camped in my sinuses, which has zonked me out. I tried to burn it out a few days ago with Indian curry, but I think I just provoked it. The only thing that really works in burning bugs out of one’s sinuses is wasabi, the veritable “ninja assassin” of condiments. Perhaps a California Roll is in order tomorrow. Because, you know, sushi is SOOOO penitential. Hmmm. Maybe not. Anyway, I’m feeling spunkier today.

3. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass said for all of my benefactors and supporters on Sunday morning was lovely. It was Sexagesima Sunday, of course, and I was especially moved by the Introit taken from Psalm 43 – for all of us:

Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? arise, and and cast us not off to the end. Why turnest Thou Thy face away, and forgettest our trouble? our belly hath cleaved to the earth: arise, O Lord, help us and deliver us….

I remember, in years past, SCREAMING this Introit at Our Lord in my head at Mass on Sexagesima Sunday. Now I glory in it, because I know that He doesn’t forget us – ever – and He will deliver us.

4. Thanks to the family that left me the voicemail a few weeks back of their youngsters saying their evening prayers and praying for their future spouses. Very moving.

5. An interesting tidbit – two, actually, from the same person, 16 months apart – from the mailbag:

NOVEMBER 10, ARSH 2012:

I just watched the first 5 minutes or so of your presentation to the Colorado Patriots, and I would like to know, before I devote an hour of my time to watching the rest of your footage, if you think that free speech includes the right to yell FIRE in a crowded theatre?

My husband deployed to Afghanistan just yesterday. This is his fourth tour in the Middle East. If someone here insults Islam by burning Qurans or drawing insulting political cartoons, and those actions lead to so much as one hair being harmed on any of the heads of my husband and his brothers and sisters in arms, jail time won’t matter. That individual will need protective custody from the blowback here at home. When that Pastor in Florida burned those Qurans, our entire military went into a heightened state of alert. The installation where we live was practically on lockdown because of the security increases.

The Muslims my husband interacts with are not like the a lot of the “westernized” mainstream Muslims we encounter here in the States. Culturally, the Muslims over there, and specifically the men, are a prideful, arrogant people with the emotional intelligence and maturity of a bunch of middle school girls. They WILL as soon shoot someone as look at them over even the slightest offense. I wish you could see the curriculum of the cultural sensitivity training that my husband has received over the past ten years. This training isn’t a matter of appeasement of the enemy, it is a matter of life and death.

I am not suggesting for one second that we pander to the antics of these simple-minded, ignorant fools. I am simply saying that no one should yell FIRE in a crowded theatre, and if someone does do so, and people are injured or killed as a result of being trampled in the stampede created by panicking individuals, then the one who yelled FIRE should be held accountable and punished.
Respectfully-
T

My reply:It is a moral obligation to scream fire in a crowded theater when the theater is in fact ON FIRE. The theater is on fire. Therefore I will scream like a banshee.Use your brain. Think.Ann

SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER, February 21, ARSH 2014

What a difference a year (and some change) makes. I go back and revisit our previous email exchange every few months, and I am thunderstruck at how much my perspective on just about everything has changed. I believe the theater is, indeed, ON FIRE.

I revisited, as well, your Vendee genocide presentation one day last week, after reading the blog post regarding the email from SSG J from [state redacted]…

IF God hears the prayers of a former separatist, (pseudo)fundamentalist, cultish, protestant follower-in-childhood-only-because-I-had-no-choice who, at 18, decided that the best way to give the church “the finger” was to join the military so I could defend their right to be “conscientious objector” nutjobs, then He hears frequent prayers from me for you. If not, then I guess I am just talking to myself and/or to that very annoying IBSC in my head. Whatever the case may be, I am glad to know that you are well and happy. I appreciate so much the things that I have learned and continue to learn through you that I want to put my money where my mouth is. It won’t be much, but I hope in some small way, it represents the gratitude that I feel.

Sincerely-

T

6. And finally, for all of you who struggle with kids (or adults) who don’t want to go to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:

Dear Ann,

Our 2 sons, 8 and 10 had started to suddenly come down with a bad headache when I said “go get dressed for Mass”. A lot of whining, grumbling – what I assume is typical behavior for many kids at Mass time. This behavior made me feel so sad and made me feel as if I were absolutely failing in making them understand the magnitude and importance of the Mass.

I had copied this post to my AB file and although I initially felt hesitant to share it with them, on one particularly argumentative, Sunday morning, I pulled it out, asked them to sit down and read it to them.

I interspersed a few of their favorite activities toward the end and then said, ” I am leaving in 5 minutes. If you are coming, you will be in the car”.

They were both in the car.

My fear that it was too harsh for them or too “grown up” a concept was nonsense. They GOT IT, got in the car and Sunday mornings are a lot easier, ever since.

If they start with the big, exasperated sighs, i just say “tell it to your Best Friend” and it is over.

I just thought reposting may help another family going through the same thing.

I cannot thank you enough.

May God continue to work through you and bless you.

Donna

The post she read to her sons:

“Let’s say your best friend has been arrested, tried in a kangaroo court and sentenced to execution for a crime that YOU committed. Before the actual execution, your best friend is tortured, whipped until skinned, and then led through the streets being mocked, pelted and spit upon by huge crowds. He finally gets to the place of execution and is stripped naked and then NAILED hand and foot to two beams to hang and slowly asphyxiate. Amazingly, your best friend does all of this willingly, and is even CONSOLED by the fact that you are present at his execution. What is the proper, moral and dignified way for you to behave while you hold vigil at the place of execution while your best friend dies in agony on your behalf?

A.) “Day-um. This is SO FLIPPING BOOOORING. This is SOOO STUPID. I can think about my friend at home just the same as here. AND I can do chores or watch the football game at the same time! I’m out. Peace, yo.”

B.) “I’ll hang around, but there better be a kick-ass rock band, a PowerPoint show and a stand-up comedy routine or else I AM OUT. If I’m not seriously entertained, then forget it. Oh, and if ANYONE brings up the fact that my friend is dying on my behalf for crimes that I COMMITTED and tries to lay some sort of guilt trip on me, I’m just going to leave. Screw that.”

C.) “I’ll go, but they had better let me talk and sing and be an on-site usher or else I AM OUT. I’m not going to go and just be anonymous and ignored, because if you think about it, this really is ALL ABOUT ME.”

D.) On knees, SILENT, head covered (for females), SILENT, mortified, SILENT, begging in prayer for your Best Friend to forgive you, and telling Him how much you love Him and His Sacrifice of Himself for you. Oh, and SILENT.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

This month’s Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered for all of my benefactors and supporters will be tomorrow, Sunday, February 23rd.

Deepest thanks, once again, for your continued kindness and munificence, and for your continued prayers. They have been, and continue to be, deeply efficacious. But, the race is not run yet, and we must – all of us – continue to strive. I can only hope that my prayers for all of you are fractionally as effectual in your lives as your prayers have been for me.

A few of years ago I stumbled across a movie on Netflix (when I still had it) that I *thought* would be very interesting. It was called “Carrington” and starred Emma Thompson, whom I have liked as an actress ever since she dramatized and starred in what will forever be the definitive film version of Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility”.

The movie “Carrington” was about the so-called “Bloomsbury Group” in England in the early 20th century. This group of people is widely regarded in retrospect as being massively influential, and as one of the purest early sources of Modernism – the heresy which has infected and all-but-destroyed the Church, and Western Civilization as a corollary.

These people were all massively disturbed, with almost all of them being bisexual and embracing sodomy and rejecting monogamy as one of the purest forms of protest and rejection of (locally) Victorian, traditional, bourgeois, Christian society. To put it simply, they were all – male and female – screwing each other, egged on largely by the wicked sodomite ringleader Lytton Strachey.

You can watch “Carrington” if you want, I suppose, but be forewarned: it is pornographic. And no, not titillating or grasping at beauty in any way – it is the kind of thing that once you see you just want to go inflict a severe head trauma upon yourself so that maybe – just maybe – those incredibly sad, ugly and evil images will be purged from your memory. And in the hopes of thoroughly ruining it for you, the way it all ended was that Lytton Strachey died of cancer or some such, whereupon the “heroine”, Dora Carrington, promptly blew her head off with a shotgun.

Oh, wait. Did I also mention that they were all EUGENICISTS? Yeah. Funny how these little “idiosyncrasies” always seem to crop up cheek-by-jowel, no?

So, you may be sitting there asking yourself why in the WOLRD would I have any interest in a movie about these people in the first place. The answer is because one of the core members of this wicked group of Modernist sodomite eugenicists was none other than…

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES.

Yes, THAT John Maynard Keynes. The father and “god” of all modern economics – the most influential economist, without question, of the 20th century. Keynes’ economic theories (and it is extremely charitable to even dignify them as “theories”) basically revolved around the premise that aggregate demand was the sole determiner of overall economic activity, and thus if the State (read: “The Central Banks’ respective puppet fronts and operational arms”) intervened in the economy by printing money and providing “stimulus” to aggregate demand, this was the means by which full employment could be achieved and permanently maintained.

DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR????

As people with functioning brains in their heads now know and understand, if even only from a purely experiential, real-life basis, this is all abject, steaming hog diarrhea. Government intervention does NOT stimulate aggregate demand, but in fact hinders it. Printing money and debasing the currency is not only ineffective, but is a capital crime because it is THEFT on a scale so massive that it is literally obscured from the view of the people by virtue of its enormity. The only purpose applied Keynesian theory serves is to rapidly enrich and fraudulently empower a micro-oligarchy dwelling within the Central Bank-cum-Government matrix.

Did I mention Keynes was a super-promiscuous sodomite? And a eugenicist?

Back to the movie. So I sit through this hideous film, and guess what? Guess who has been utterly purged from the script? Guess who is never seen or mentioned?

John. Maynard. Keynes.

Wow. Ya think? Ya think these Modernist wretch tyrants and their media toadies would want to hide the fact that the “father” of this economic paradigm that is taught as unquestionable dogma in every university in Western Civilization today was a nasty pervert and despicable human being?

But wait, it gets better. Last night I stumbled across this video posted over at Ace of Spades of Friedrich Hayek being interviewed in which he speaks about Keynes. And what does Hayek (a genuinely good and contributive economist) say of Keynes? Basically, that Keynes the economist was a total fraud. He praises Keynes intrinsic intelligence, but says that he was lazy and that his economic theories were pure fluff – a paper facade. Keynes gave no deep, serious thought to any of it, and couldn’t defend it when confronted by great minds.

As even armchair economists can now see, such simple questions as:

1. What is money?
2. Where will the so-called intervening government stimulus money come from?
3. Does printing money ad infinitum have any negative moral or economic consequences?
4. If government “stimulus” does not achieve full employment, is more stimulus the answer? Is there any limit to the amount of stimulus that could be required?
5. Could an economy become addicted to this government “stimulus” and thus turn into a massive, sucking maw which then inevitably implodes upon itself killing a non-trivial percentage of the surface population?
6. Are you okay with point 5 as long as the majority of those killed are brown people and/or those who “judge” your enthusiasm for violently abusing your posterior fundament, and the posterior fundaments of others?

Guys, I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. This flagging civilization, which you are right in the heart of, is a giant, hollow scam. There’s no “there” there. The people running the world and being hailed as geniuses are almost all utter frauds. Universities churn out people who are all-but-illiterate. If you define “literacy” as being able to read street signs, then yes, most of them (but not all) are literate. If you define literacy properly, meaning a man who is well-read and truly educated and thus able to THINK, and REASON and CREATE, and thus contribute to and grow the culture, then… no. Sorry. Intellects are hollow. Souls are hollow. Culture is hollow. Government is hollow. Economies are hollow. MEN ARE HOLLOW.

It’s all going to pop. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week or next month, but it WILL pop because it MUST.

Keynes was a fraud.

The totality of the political class are all slack-jawed frauds. They couldn’t solve ANY of these problems even if they wanted to because they lack the intelligence and the character to actually do it.

The universities are FILLED with frauds, especially in the soft sciences.

The Church is filled with frauds (Marxist-sodomite infiltrators) and with those who are so woefully ignorant that their non-invincible ignorance constitutes a form of fraud.

Everything you see around you is tissue-paper thin, and if you scratch it, you realize that there is no solidity to anything in Western Civilization any longer. Instead of being anchored to Truth in a well-built and competently-helmed barque, the ropes have been cut, the ballast jettisoned, and our papier mache ship of lies is riding the gulf stream of evil straight into Hurricane Reality.

The Good News (TM) is that scripture is filled with the imagery and language of the empty being filled. Over and over again Our Lord makes clear that this condition of “hollowness” is not only fixable in every man, but what Our Lord desires for every man. But only He can fill the hollowness in men. There is no substitute. Everything else is fraud, and not only will the hollowness remain, but will increase with each attempt at filling oneself with these frauds. Dora Carrington tried to fill her hollowness with perverted sex and philosophical lies until finally her facade gave way – to a shell-full of double-aught buck. And her “friend”, John Maynard Keynes, “helped” her the same way he is “helping” the global economies today: straight into hell.

Psalm 106

Give glory to the Lord, for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever. Let them say so that have been redeemed by the Lord, whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy: and gathered out of the countries. From the rising and the setting of the sun, from the north and from the sea. They wandered in a wilderness, in a place without water: they found not the way of a city for their habitation. They were hungry and thirsty: their soul fainted in them.

And they cried to the Lord in their tribulation: and He delivered them out of their distresses. And He led them into the right way: that they might go to a city of habitation. Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to Him: and His wonderful works to the children of men. For He hath satisfied the empty soul, and hath filled the hungry soul with good things. Such as sat in darkness and in the shadow of death: bound in want and in iron.

Because they had exasperated the words of God: and provoked the counsel of the most High: And their heart was humbled with labours: they were weakened, and their was none to help them. Then they cried to the Lord in their affliction: and He delivered them out of their distresses. And He brought them out of darkness, and the shadow of death; and broke their bonds in sunder. Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to Him, and His wonderful works to the children of men.

Because He hath broken gates of brass, and burst the iron bars. He took them out of the way of their iniquity: for they were brought low for their injustices. Their soul abhorred all manner of meat: and they drew nigh even to the gates of death. And they cried to the Lord in their affliction: and He delivered them out of their distresses. He sent His Word, and healed them: and delivered them from their destructions.

Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to Him: and His wonderful works to the children of men. And let them sacrifice the sacrifice of praise: and declare His works with joy. They that go down to the sea in ships, doing business in the great waters: These have seen the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. He said the Word, and there arose a storm of wind: and the waves thereof were lifted up.

They mount up to the heavens, and they go down to the depths: their soul pined away with evils. They were troubled, and reeled like a drunken man; and all their wisdom was swallowed up. And they cried to the Lord in their affliction: and He brought them out of their distresses. And He turned the storm into a breeze: and its waves were still. And they rejoiced because they were still: and He brought them to the haven which they wished for.

Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to Him, and his wonderful works to the children of men. And let them exalt Him in the church of the people: and praise Him in the chair of the ancients. He hath turned rivers into a wilderness: and the sources of water into dry ground: A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. He hath turned a wilderness into pools of water, and a dry land into water springs.

And hath placed there the hungry; and they made a city for their habitation. And they sowed fields, and planted vineyards: and they yielded fruit of birth. And He blessed them, and they were multiplied exceedingly: and their cattle he suffered not to decrease. Then they were brought to be few: and they were afflicted through the trouble of evils and sorrow. Contempt was poured forth upon their princes: and he caused them to wander where there was no passing, and out of the way.

And He helped the poor out of poverty: and made Him families like a flock of sheep. The just shall see, and shall rejoice, and all iniquity shall stop their mouth. Who is wise, and will keep these things: and will understand the mercies of the Lord?

Many folks marvel at how I have been able to shrug off and be almost completely unbothered by all of the truly evil emails, commentary and occasional snail mail that I receive or read about myself since I went viral nearly three years ago. Many people – both men and women – refuse to speak forthrightly in the public sphere, or choose stay out of “the public fray” altogether because they are genuinely wounded and impacted by the rhetorical flagellation that comes with any level of public, forthright truth-telling in this post-Christian culture. And yet none of the insults or even the threats bother me on a personal level in the least. Let me fill you in on how I not only “deal” with them, but I how I transform them into so many small victories for Christ, in the hopes that you all might start doing the same thing in your battlespaces.

(Massive, drawn-out eyeroll, followed by a deep, quasi-despairing sigh.)

I am quickly referenced in the comment thread below the piece. As an aside, I think that HotAir.com went south when Michelle Malkin sold it and it is just too weak and squishy for me, but I still keep an eye on it to see what the pulse and lines of argument are over in squishy RINO land.

Anywhoodle, here are the relevant comments from the thread, and understand that this is actually pretty mild stuff in my world. Emphases mine.

Can’t wait for Ann Barnhardt to read that.Xavier on February 9, 2014 at 5:12 PM

Yeah.. sexually frustrated middle aged women like Ann Barnhardt should really invest in vibrators.And I think that Pope Francis has captured the world’s attention because it is a real life Shoes of the Fisherman or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. So yes people delight in the “scandal of normality” like they do in the movies. The interesting thing is that Pope Francis is a very astute politician. He knows how his gestures play.Illinidiva on February 9, 2014 at 5:54 PM

Why don’t you go bang Ann? She could sure use it.Illinidiva on February 9, 2014 at 8:39 PM

Again, this is relatively mild, but it makes for a great teaching example. So how do I not only deal with this, but turn this into a little victory for Christ in the battlespace and really stick it to The Enemy and his minions?

When I go to Mass today, I will pray AT THE ELEVATION OF THE HOST for “Illinidiva”, and I will also receive Holy Communion for him/her, and pray that Our Lord give all of the graces of today’s reception of His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity that would have gone to me to “Illinidiva” instead. Our Lord knows exactly who “Illinidiva” is, and exactly what “Illinidiva” needs in order to make it to heaven and enjoy the Beatific Vision. Given the content of “Illinidiva’s” comments on the HotAir thread, I think it is safe to say that “Illinidiva” perhaps needs some specific prayers at this time, and if I can help with that, and if I can offer the graces of my assistance at today’s Mass and my reception of Our Lord for “Illinidiva”, then I am delighted to do so.

And let’s face it. The odds of “Illinidiva” being prayed for at the Elevation of the Host, or receiving the graces of a reception of the Blessed Sacrament by any other means today, are almost certainly quite low if the coarseness and profanity of his/her comments are any indication.

The way I view this is that “Illinidiva” is in need of prayer, and I happened upon this comment thread so that exactly that would happen, all in accordance and cooperation with the Divine Providence. And not only that, but in writing this piece, which many, many people will read, not only will “Illinidiva” receive even more prayers, but now some of you will begin doing the same thing when you are attacked, insulted and calumniated. And the devil, whose bag of tricks is shockingly small, gets his weak-sauce attempt at bothering me not only countered, but gets a good, sound beating with his own weapon.

As you can imagine, I am blessed in that I get to do this fairly often.

Kids, when the devil attacks you with a butter knife, counter with a precision-guided MOAB with the butter knife duct taped to its housing.

You have totally destroyed my life. Thank you. I am a reserve soldier in [state redacted], and a member of the intelligence community. I knew deep down in Iraq in 2004-2005 (I was a semi-practicing Baptist) that something was terribly wrong with America. Hell, I knew it when I was in college in the 90s, but it became starkly obvious that we were headed for economic collapse. To clarify, I was handpicked by my commander to join the Warrant Officer Corps this past summer. Through reading and reflecting on what you have written I have decided to leave the army that I have loved and served in for 13 years. Perhaps I am not as brave as you are because I have chosen to wait out the next three years of my contract, then find something else to do. My story is a long an convoluted one and I won’t bore you with all the details, but for me this decision has been especially harsh. I am a second generation Cavalry Scout, my father and I both served with the 1st of the 7th US Cavalry; he fought in the Philippines in WWII and I served in Iraq. If you could see my last half dozen NCOER’s you’d probably think that my evaluators thought I could walk on water. I loved the army, and still do to a certain extent, but I can no longer wear the uniform knowing that I am lending my skills to this government which directly attacks the Constitution that I swore to uphold. I told one of my friends recently that my ‘problem’ was that I was giving the regime legitimacy every time I put the uniform on. Every senior person I have talked to about this thinks I am either nuts, anti-social, prejudicial to good order and discipline or something of that stripe. All of them are waiting on their precious pensions or are too afraid to have THEIR commanders come down on them. I pointed out that we swore to do this at the cost of our own lives, so what is a promotion, or a career or a pension compared to that? Is any of those things worth your soul? I had the opportunity to double my pay and pension and cover myself in glory one more time, but I have chosen to really tork off my chain of command by asking to rescind my application to WO School and not reenlist. To many of my friends and co-workers, this is a complete 180 and hard to understand.

The last straw (there have been many others) was during an anti-suicide briefing when a young lieutenant stated categorically that the army could NOT hold your mental health status against you if you sought treatment for PTSD because “the government would never do anything illegal.” Rather than slap him, (mind you this is right during the Snowden blow up) I walked out of the briefing and had a Sergeant Major and SFC berate me for being a jackass. The worst part is, he was probably factually correct, because many now believe that whatever the government does IS legal by virtue of them being the government.

I am not a wise man. I am covetous, lustful, foolish, wrathful, arrogant, lazy, proud… you name it. But I refuse to fall any further.[Oooh-Rah, Sir.]

I ran across your video on the Vendee massacre while researching French while at DLI in 2012 and it really shook me up. I just wish I’d had the courage to make this choice then rather than now.

There are still people, millions and millions of them, who honestly believe that this nation, economy, culture, society, whatever you want to call it, is salvageable and can be turned around. There are still people who, after all of this, still think that ELECTIONS and Washington D.C. will lead us all to the Elysian Fields and pastures of plenty. These people honestly believe that Mitt Romney can and will “fix everything”, even though Mitt Romney has actually implemented EVERYTHING people are screaming about Obama attempting, such as RomneyCare (which IS ObamaCare), insurance mandates, contraception mandates, zero-copay abortion on demand, sodomite marriage and assault rifle bans, and has yet to even acknowledge the mathematical impossibility of government spending. These people still believe that Darryl Issa and Allen West (and now the new psychopath politician flavors of the month like Ted Cruz) will suddenly re-assert the Rule of Law on November 7th, or something. You know, just like they swore up and down that these same people would “stop Obama” and “turn Washington around” after the 2010 elections.

Anyone who still believes this, very simply, has their head up their wazoo to their shoulders.

Not only will Mitt Romney, Darryl Issa, Michelle Bachmann and Allen West NOT do ANYTHING of any substance if “elected”, they CAN’T do anything. It is already too far gone. The economy is MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to fix. $222 trillion in unfunded government mandates over the next 75 years. At minimum $1.4 quadrillion in global derivatives exposure. Thousands of MANPADS and millions of pounds of American weaponry are now in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood / al Qaeda thanks to Obama’s Libyan gunrunning. Iran will have an atomic arsenal, if they don’t have one already, either self-produced or procured from Pakistan or the old Soviet arsenal. 60 million babies have already been killed. That blood is spilled. You can’t ever bring them back.

Now to the point of this essay. God’s wrath cannot be assuaged at this point because we, the people of the former United States and Western Civilization, are the most guilty, culpable, iniquitous society to ever exist by many orders of magnitude. In terms of our guilt, we are far, far guiltier than the people of late Rome. There were aspects of late Roman culture that were prima facie worse than our culture, specifically the torture blood sports – not that we aren’t racing towards that at a dead sprint ourselves – but we are far guiltier than the late Romans, and thus deserve far, far worse. And that is exactly what we are going to get.

How can we be orders of magnitude guiltier than the late Romans, or any other culture for that matter?

Because we are willfully ignorant due to extreme intellectual and, especially, moral laziness. If there was ever a group to whom the words “YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER” applied, it is us. And we have absolutely, positively no excuse whatsoever for our ignorance.

I can list five explicit reasons why:

1. We were a free culture. This isn’t Saudi Arabia or North Korea, so save me your bee-ess excuses. We have been free to read ANYTHING, learn ANYTHING, subscribe to ANYTHING. This has been the most licensed culture in all of human history. Male, female, white, brown, old, young, you name it. There hasn’t even been a military draft in this country for forty years. We have had the near-universal societal leisure to pursue and ponder anything and everything. And we have chosen Honey Boo Boo, the Kardashians, and mentally retarded giants who chase balls in stadiums like dogs. We have chosen to be ignorant losers who revel and glory in our own inhuman stupidity, when we could have chosen to be excellent.

2. We are wealthy. We are the materially wealthiest culture – across the board – ever to exist. In all other cultures poverty has meant starvation, disease brought on by filth, and daily hard labor just to survive. In this culture, “poverty” means that your TV is under 42″ and that your ObamaPhone is running Android Version 3, not Version 4. No one starves to death here. People don’t die from ingesting human fecal matter in their drinking water. The necessities are totally taken care of, and thus people are free to spend the vast majority of their lives at leisure. Even our jobs are leisure, because we all get to choose what it is that we do for a living. Neither family ties nor the government have mandated, under pain of death, what any of us do vocationally. Whatever it is that you are doing or have done vocationally, you chose it and consented to it, and you were free to pursue your own interests. Since our culture has been so wealthy, most people have been able to support themselves with a 40 hour workweek, leaving in excess of 40 hours per week for pure leisure, free to pursue and ponder anything and everything.

3. We could have been educated. We are not. Most people in this culture, even though education was possible, are totally uneducated, and contra-educated. I would classify this culture as “barely literate”. People can read and sound out a small core vocabulary of words, but there is very little comprehension of what is read, and that which is read is either ignorant, insipid or morally degenerated. What people are almost universally incapable of and totally unwilling to do is think for themselves – not just to be spoonfed “answers”, but to actually ponder and parse information, to independently synthesize data, make connections, and to think through logical progressions. I don’t care how many bee-ess college degrees you have, because all “education” today consists of is pumping and dumping information onto multiple-choice tests and occasionally faking a short-answer or occasional paper. That isn’t education. That’s beta pack animals learning the gestures of submission to the alpha. This culture is operating just epsilon above the animal plane – and those are the “college educated” people. The inner cities are operating on the purely animal level. But we COULD have been the most truly educated culture ever.

4. Every single one of you reading this has the sum of human knowledge literally at his fingertips. The most damning aspect of the internet won’t be the pornography, I suspect. How can I possibly say that? Because the internet pins every single one of us into a moral corner because it completely removes any ability to argue that “I didn’t know – I didn’t have the information.”

I gave a priest a thorough rhetorical beating a few years ago because he said something really stupid in a public and official setting that could have been disproved and illuminated in about seven seconds with a simple google, or any search engine, query. Whether you are a priest or a professor, or a politician or a wild-eyed blogger, there is NO EXCUSE for making incorrect public statements, no matter how trivial. If you speak, you have a grave moral obligation to be right, that is to speak the Truth. The cascading consequences of factual and moral errors are massive and horrifying, and we will only see those consequences at the General Judgment. When you have the sum of human knowledge at your fingertips, and thus the potential to extrapolate BEYOND the sum of human knowledge, thus expanding the domain of human knowledge itself; when you have been given that ability and are still so lazy that you can’t even get the already-known facts-at-your-fingertips right, there will be hell to pay for that sloth.

As an aside, I am at this point reminded of Leon Panetta’s lying excuse that no help was sent into Benghazi because they “didn’t have enough information.” As if a live, real-time video feed from a drone circling directly overhead “wasn’t enough information”. Leon Panetta is lying, and justice will be done upon him in this life or the next, but everyone else in this culture who tries to claim that “we didn’t know” will deserve exactly the same wrath.

5. Finally, we have far more guilt and culpability than any other culture because we WERE a Christian culture and turned our back on God with full knowledge and conscious forethought. The Romans of the 4th century were pagans who either knew very little or nothing at all of Christ. They had the Natural Law as their only guide. We, in the starkest of contrasts, have Christ Himself, physically present in the Eucharist, with our culture *allegedly* built on Him, and yet we have utterly denied and rejected Him and have reverted and descended all the way back to the worst pagan cultures, and in some ways have plumbed even greater depths of depravity. The only revolt that is worse in enormity and scope than ours against God is the revolt of Lucifer. Even the Jews of the Old Testament in all of their many episodes of falling away from God, didn’t have the knowledge of Christ (obviously, because the Incarnation had not yet happened) and did not have the Physical Presence of God Himself to be taken into their own bodies, in the Eucharist.

We have nailed Christ to the Cross, and when He looks at us and asks us why, we have the unmitigated gall to say, “It’s not my fault. I didn’t see You there. You should have spoken up.”

WE are going to burn like no other culture has burned before, including Rome, because we have, by far, the most guilt. Ignorance due to laziness in the face of unprecedented freedom and license, wealth and leisure time, potential education, technology and availability of information, and the knowledge of and physical presence of Christ Himself is why we must and we WILL burn. No one has ever, ever deserved it more.

It’s amazing the things you can learn in a life if you just shut your piehole and listen. People ask me frequently, “How do you know all of this stuff?” This website is nothing more than the fruit of a life of near silence, which is required for listening, both auricularly and in the form of reading, which is the purest form of listening.

People look at the now-dead First American Republic’s defense spending budget and despair. The amount of money being spent is massive and implies a massive federal income tax as a pure necessity in order to maintain any level of defense preparedness.

I have some good news (for a change) with regards to the issue of defense spending, and you all need to listen up because this will be another HUGE point to remember for after the collapse and war when you are rebuilding or building a new nation from scratch.

The major defense contractors spend at least ten times, and probably closer to twenty times what is actually needed on every project and contract. This is done with the full knowledge and at the command of the federal government.

The massive overspending is on man-hours. Major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumann, General Dynamics and Raytheon, in addition to supplying and developing technology for the military, are also massive middle-class shadow welfare projects. The top 25 US Defense companies directly employ roughly two million people. The top 5 US defense companies directly employ 550,000 people. Directly. This doesn’t count the subcontractors to these companies.

These companies, as they operate today, have at least TEN LEVELS of largely unnecessary, redundant and even detrimental “management” between the scientists and engineers who are actually doing productive work and the actual upper management of the company. Further, these ten levels of “management” are each low six-figure positions. We’re not talking ten levels of redundant janitorial staff at $12.00 per hour. We’re talking TEN LAYERS of $100k-$250k positions.

And these people do basically nothing that is genuinely productive. In fact, they slow down the process of genuine development and productivity, hamstringing and bogging-down the work of the actual engineers and computer scientists who, ironically, dwell at the absolute BOTTOM of the corporate structure.

Because of this massive bloat in man-hours and horrifically reduced productivity, .gov is billed AT LEAST ten times, and it may be closer to twenty times, what it should be billed by these defense contractors to achieve the same results and innovation.

But before you pick up your torches and pitchforks, please understand that this is exactly what .gov WANTS. Like I said, this is all a massive middle-class shadow welfare system. The .gov explicitly drove these defense contractors into these uber-bloated management regimes in order to provide middle-class jobs. The sub-urbs of the Denver metro area and all other cities which have a sizable defense industry presence, are filled with these defense “management” employees. In other words, these are people who are totally dependent on .gov for their paychecks, and whose jobs are completely, totally unnecessary and have a negative net impact on productivity. Yay. Go America.

Defense is not the only area in the economy where these massive shadow welfare paradigms exist. As Warren Pollock pointed out in one of our YouTube conversations, almost all of the so-called “compliance” positions in the financial services and banking sectors are completely unnecessary and counter-productive. It could also be argued, and argued very, very well that around 97% of the accounting industry is also a .gov shadow welfare project revolving around nothing but the payment of federal income taxes, which shouldn’t even exist in the first place. And finally, we should all understand that most of the health insurance industry is nothing but a .gov shadow welfare matrix. Health insurance should be catastrophic coverage only, and thus have an extremely small and streamlined back office labor requirement.

Why? Why did .gov do this? Because almost all of the true manufacturing jobs in the United States have been sent overseas. We MAKE very, very little actual, physical stuff here relative to population and consumption. This economy is now almost entirely a SERVICE economy. Sixty years ago all of the people who are today working in “management” in these defense companies and the other government-created shadow welfare paradigms were working in manufacturing, some in management, and some in actual fabrication.

From what I have heard, there are massive numbers of people working in these defense company management positions getting paid six-figure salaries who literally could not boil water or make themselves a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if their lives depended on it, and thus should be working on a low-skill assembly line somewhere, not browbeating Ph.D. engineers. I personally know that a large number of the people working in the financial services “compliance” regimes struggle to keep from drooling on their desks and when provoked have been known to throw their own poop.

The government created this shadow-welfare economy in order to replace all of the REAL manufacturing jobs that it consciously and willfully exported to China.

So, when it comes time to rebuild and establish a Department of War (not “Department of Defense”) in the new Nation, these defense contractors will need to be told in no uncertain terms that there should be no more than three levels of management between the CEO and the engineer, and any contracts should payout as such. The only reason the defense contractors are creating these ridiculous management matrices is because the money is flowing from .gov to do it. Take away the money and the corporations will streamline almost overnight. Management levels 2-8 will suddenly, miraculously, almost as if in an epiphany, be recognized as non-essential. In doing this, you will be able to maintain technological and military dominance for a mere fraction of the cost. The talent is here. It can be done. The .mil thing isn’t the impossibly large money-suck that it appears to be when you understand that the outflows to contractors are inflated by a factor of twenty.

Further, in the new Nation, whatever it is, you guys are going to have to start MAKING STUFF HERE AGAIN. Everything. Steel, electronics, textiles, furniture, vehicles, everything. Establish import tariffs which will generate revenue for the government and put Chinese slave labor behind the eight ball relative to domestic employment, productivity and manufacturing. The people who are currently employed in all of the shadow welfare industries I just mentioned will need jobs. Those jobs will be MANUFACTURING jobs.

From over on the “Disc Jockey Ann” page, here is the second movement (Allegretto) from Beethoven’s 7th in A Minor, which is at once liquid sadness, but because it oscillates into A Major, is also cautiously optimistic. Every key in music carries its own specific emotional correlation – which I find miraculous in and of itself. Why do certain keys and chords in music elicit specific, consistent emotional responses across humanity? It’s just miraculous.

The key of A Minor is sadness, straight-up. The key of A Major was described by Christian Schubart as, “suitable for declarations of innocent love, hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.”